On paper it looks like we earned an average of an extra $10 per day over last month. However, the changes in Google Adsense policy to images beside the ads hit us pretty hard at the tail end of the month and really dragged our adsense earnings down (adsense makes up the lions share of our revenue)
We had a few income sources come online (Clicksor) this month and some one off deals like a website sale…but realistically we’ll have a hard road in January to even break $100 a day. However, these in my opinion are only minor setbacks. We’ve been spoiled with an unusually high CTR due to the old images beside the google ads and now that we aren’t allowed to do that anymore, we’re just at a more realistic CTR. It does suck, but it’s still more than worthwhile to continue to build our sites.
Goals for 2007:
Now that we’re actually devoting two full days to developing our business every week, we’re hoping to accelerate growth. We’d like to be over $300 daily income by the end of 2007. When our network gets a little bigger, I want to try other advertising methods such as Intellitext to help grow our income from various sources. I am also hoping that by the end of 2007 we’re not as dependent on Google Adsense as we are right now. Jason and I have always wanted to do this, but with the huge income hit we’ve taken due to the new images policy really hit it home to us in the way that you always remember (the wallet)
As John Chow stated in his recent blog earnings post recap (link) finding the perfect balance in various advertising options can really increase your revenue potential. In 2007 we should be able to grow our sites to a level where we can leverage our position with the various advertising agencies like John has done with his blog (being able to post Google Adsense along with Intellitext for example)
So, while the revenue hit did hurt, at least this business is not a primary business for Jason or myself and I’m confident we can bounce back from it, though it may take a few months.
Happy New Year Everyone!
